The newly appointed cleaning supplies cabinet in our laundry room didn’t have any kind of lock or latch on it, and with babies crawling around I didn’t want to take the risk of them getting into it. I needed a way to ward off those grabby baby hands!
The plastic child safety latches I have previous experience with attach with sticky tape, and they always fall off. I wanted a more permanent and more attractive solution.
I chose some medium sized chest latches from Home Depot. They are oil rubbed bronze and attach with 6 screws. They aren’t for heavy duty applications, but they seem to have worked for my needs.
Note: these latches are not meant for child safety and haven’t been tested for such use. However, I do like knowing that They won’t randomly fall off because the stickiness wore off. They are not intended to be a replacement for adult supervision, rather they are additional backup. I am not responsible for the safety of your children. You are. 🙂 I’m just showing you what I did.
The first thing I did was hold the latch up to the cabinet and decide where I wanted it to go. The latches go over the edge of the cabinet a little bit, but that’s okay.
I next marked where the screws would go by poking a marker into the screw holes and drawing dots on the cabinet.
Next, using my husbands drill without asking, I drilled pilot holes in each spot.
(Photos only show 4 holes, but there were actually six. Oops!)
After I drilled the pilot holes, I places the latch back onto the cabinet and centered it over the holes, and held it up with some pink washi tape.
(How’s that for a girly home improvement hack?)
Using an impact driver (again without asking) I drove the screws into the cabinet.
I recommend going slow and stopping before they are all completely tightned. I waited to finish tightening them until everything was in place to allow for some wiggle room and alignment.
You could probably use a handheld screw driver and that would reduce risk of splitting the cabinet wood and squishing the latch, but I didn’t have any problems.
I repeated these steps to attach the other aide of the latch.
Once it was up, I tested the door. It stayed closed but I can tell it’s not a super strong hold.
I decided to add a second set of latches to the bottom of the cabinet as well for extra strength.
All done!
Seems to be working!
I like how it turned out and it seems to be preventing little hands from opening the doors too much!
Some thing I observed after is worth noting but not huge deals:
The latch has a part that pokes out which makes it so that you can’t open or close only one door at a time. You have to close them both together to get it to line up right.
Not a big deal.
These are definitely not impenetrable (I doubt any latch is against a stubborn toddler) and with enough force I do fear they might pop off or break the cabinet, but the amount of strength a baby or young toddler can muster probably won’t affect them at all.
I call that a win!
I think I’ll go add some to the kitchen cabinet too!
That’s it! Pretty easy diy today, I hope you like it!
Friendly reminder that no child proofing measure is a replacement for responsible attention from a parent.
How do you keep grabby hands out of your cupboards?
